Today, the building challenge was to build an animal. I was rather conflicted by this topic and toyed with several ideas for a while. But after looking at the accessories box and having assessed the huge amount of golden blades that I possessed, I decided to build a phoenix.
The original idea was to arrange the golden blades in such a way that they looked like wings. A phoenix was decided on because it was the only bird that had wings that could be golden. After some tinkering around, the design emerged.
After the wings, the head emerged. Inspiration was taken from Aaron Newman and slowly, the rest of the bird emerged in hues of brilliant gold and yellow. I'm generally quite happy with this model because I normally don't have much aptitude for building animals.
Ironically, the simple design of the rear was the one that took the most time. I was running out of golden blades and couldn't create the signature, voluminous tail of a phoenix. This design was chosen for its simplicity, or maybe just because it used the least amount of golden blades.
'The phoenix can be split into three sections; the head, body, and wings. The three sections are mostly connected by SNOT pieces and other methods. This removability helps me to make minute changes to selective parts of the phoenix without destroying the rest of the bird.
The head design is something to note. Part of the neck section is actually a NEXO Knights shield that I chose simply because of its color. This shield went on to become the core of the phoenix, anchoring all three sections together.
The phoenix features 5 points of articulation; as shown above:
